


Once Upon a Million Lifetimes

by Metronomeblue



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Code Breaker AU, Coffeeshop AU, Doctor Who AU, F/M, I love AUs okay, Role-swap AU, So many AUs, WWI AU, WWII AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 12:32:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1899168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metronomeblue/pseuds/Metronomeblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Captain Swan AUs, sporadically updated.</p><p>1. Coffeeshop AU- Killian orders a vanilla cupcake every day. Emma wants to know why.<br/>2. Role-swap AU- Killian is the saviour, Emma is the sheriff. Storybrooke is what it is.<br/>3. WWII AU- They only ever meet on beaches<br/>4. Doctor Who AU- Killian is the Doctor, Emma his companion. Onwards into the stars.<br/>5. Code-Breaker AU- Killian writes Emma notes via German telegrams. It drives her nuts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. How about a bakery?

He orders a vanilla cupcake every day.

Every. Day.

And it's not that regulars are weird or anything, it's just that, well... He doesn't look like a vanilla guy. Guyliner, leather jacket, head-to-toe black. Not to mention the earring. Nothing about the Irishman says 'vanilla'.

Tequila-lemon dipped in chocolate, maybe, but not vanilla.

So yeah, Emma's a little bit curious now.

And no, it has nothing to do with the blue eyes or the ruffled hair or the... accent.

It's just weird, and Emma was bored the minute she poured her fifth cup of coffee the morning she started this job.

So when he comes in, smirk settled temptingly on his lips and hands shoved carelessly in his pockets, she's just bursting with curiosity. He opens his mouth to order, as usual, and she just can't help herself.

"Why vanilla?" She asks suddenly, and she wants to clap her hands over her mouth, stop sound from leaving her ever again, because he smiles, wide and knowing and smug... and ignores her question.

"Blackberry muffin, please." And now this is just weird, because he's changed his order. None of the regulars have ever changed their order. Not ever. She tilts her head, mouth hanging a bit open, and he laughs.

And it's nice.

And she huffs, more than a bit embarrassed and very, very curious, because he still hasn't answered her question. She hands him the muffin awkwardly, practically shoving it at him from across the counter.

She's not usually at a loss for words, so Ruby quirks an eyebrow at her as he leaves, muffin in hand and smile still set in his face. Emma shakes her head, fuming and fighting a smile.

The next day is the same. Sort of.

She asks him what his name is, and that smile comes up again. He reaches out a hand to shake, and she takes it warily.

"Killian Jones," he grins, and feeling challenged, she shoots him a matching smirk.

"Emma Swan," and then, sensing an opportunity, "Why the muffin?"

He orders a piece of carrot cake.

The day after that she's prepared. She baked a round of carrot cake that morning, fresh and hot. When he comes in, she lays down a slice in front of him before he even reaches the counter. He looks down, a fond smile playing with the edges of his mouth. He looks back up at her, meeting her eyes with an innocent, breezy smile.

"Maple scone, please." She wants to slump down and bang her head against the counter. She also wants to punch him. In the face. With her face.

She gives it to him, and he breaks it in half later to find a piece of paper stuffed into it.

WHY VANILLA CUPCAKES?

He laughs and folds it up, hiding it in his pocket.

Ruby begins calling him her future husband. Emma hits her with a dish towel.

Every day for three months he manages to find something different to order. A banana muffin, peanut butter cupcake, chocolate torte, huckleberry danish. Until eventually he has to loop around and start off the list again.

Emma is not prepared for three more months of this insanity.

"What do I have to do to make you stop?" She eventually sighs, handing over an onion-parmesan bagel.

He smiles, the same way he does every day, and this time he turns back, leans over the counter like he's going to talk to her. Like he's flirting.

"Go out with me. Today." His tone warps the words, making what could have been sleazy or lazy pleading and hesitant instead. "Please."

She stands for a moment, eyes flicking over his face as though checking he's serious.

"Yeah?" Her voice trembles a bit, and his smile softens, from confident ladykiller to shy bookworm.

"Yeah." Emma notices she's been twisting the dishrag between her hands for the duration of the conversation and she puts it down.

"Okay." She swallows, smiling. "Where?"

"No 'why'?" He smiles back.

"I've learned, you see." She laughs, taking off her apron. "That one doesn't work with you."

"Ah, of course." She steps around the counter and he proffers his arm. "Milady."

"Milady my ass," she snorts. "I'm just Emma."

"Emma." Her name is sunshine off his tongue. "Emma." He nods, and they walk.

It's a lovely date, actually. They eat lemon angel food cake on the grass in Central Park, and there aren't even bugs.

It's a nice change from the last few whiskey-fueled one-night stands Emma has substituted for 'dates'.

The next day she finds herself anticipating his arrival. She realizes she's been doing that for three months. How odd.

"Coconut pound cake, please." She rolls her eyes and they both laugh. "Still not asking why?"

"Never again," she chuckles, resigned. "'Why' doesn't even sound like a word anymore."

"Would you like me to tell you?" He asked, leaning over the counter on his clasped hands. Emma leans against the pastry case and nods, amused by this turn of events. Ruby is watching hungrily from around the supply closet.

"Of course," Emma scoffs. "Was three and a half months not enough to show you the lack of mysteries in my life?" He chuckles.

"The first day I came into town, I saw this place. You were on a break, I suppose, and you were eating a vanilla cupcake." He smiled fondly, lost in thought. "You said they were your favorite. I came in, to get away from the heat, and when I ordered one you smiled. I was a bit nervous, you know, new in town, so I didn't have the courage to ask you out then, and the cake was so good I came back the next day. I ordered the same thing, and you smiled again. I think I just wanted to see you smile." Emma smiles, trying to imagine Killian shy.

"You're kind of a creeper, you know that?" He looks suitably offended, and begins to protest, but she cuts him off with a kiss.

"Why did you stop?" He asks, disgruntled, after she breaks away.

"Finish your story, creeper man, and then we can kiss." Emma pulls herself onto the edge of the counter, swinging her legs around so she's next to him. Killian raises an eyebrow, and she grins. "So why the changing order?"

"You stopped smiling." He looks nervously at his hands. "I thought it would be a way to get to know you, maybe surprise you into smiling."

Emma smiles.

Then she kisses him.

He smiles into the kiss, and they're both grinning like fools, kissing and smiling and laughing.

And Ruby gives them the picture of that kiss on their wedding day.

Emma smacks her with a napkin.


	2. Saviour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Killian is the Saviour, Emma is the Sheriff. Storybrooke is what it is.

Killian Jones is the Saviour. It's been known for the last year that he'll save them all, this tiny child.

Snow and Charming are crying, hearts breaking as they're ripped from their child.

Emma watches quietly, biting her lip.

"I hope you're brave, kid." She whispers. "You're gonna have to be."

Twenty-eight years later, nothing had changed.

Mary-Margaret walking to work, sweet and quiet and lonely. David Nolan in a coma, unknowing and forgettable and alone. Regina Mills in charge, iron and smugness and apples and loneliness. Graham Humbert, Sheriff and sweetheart and lonely. Emma Swan, deputy and workaholic and lonely.

Storybrooke was loneliness clothed in bright lights and wood and work.

And then Henry, sweet, intrepid, clever Henry, who ran down to the Sheriff's station after school to visit Emma. Henry who aged when no-one else did. Emma noticed it. She noticed every day, and every night she forgot.

Because Storybrooke was forgetting clothed in overworking and oversleeping and overthinking.

And everything was the same every day, everything was static and frozen and wrong, so wrong. And nobody noticed, nothing changed, nobody aged or lived or died.

Because Strorybrooke was time, locked in a day of routine movement.

And then Henry disappeared, and the whole town went frantic, searching everywhere, everywhere and not finding him.

And the search was still going in the morning.

Because Storybrooke was a family, a town united by love for one little boy, pity for one worried mother, desperate searching for a lost child.

But Henry came back, seated happily in the backseat of a lemon-yellow Volkswagon Beetle. And Emma was as happy as (happier than) anyone else to see henry back safe and sound, but it was the driver of the car who caught her eye.

"Sweet boy, wouldn't you say?" Graham was standing behind her, and she turned, looking up at him questioningly, but when she looked back the driver was out of the car.

And he was different. The air around him seemed to move more quickly than anywhere else, and his leather jacket caught the light more deftly than her own. He was just... a few seconds faster than everything else in Storybrooke.

Because Storybrooke was slow, sluggish, frozen.

And that night, lying in her bed, Emma heard a scraping, a creaking, and when she went up to her window to look she found the time had changed. The clock, perpetually stuck at 8:15, had moved. Emma smiled, wide and brilliant and real for the first time in twenty-eight years.

Because Storybrooke was changing.

The next day, Emma remembered. Time moved forward, and she was almost willingly taken out to sea in the tidal wave of action that followed the clock's signal.

Killian Jones, the stranger said his name was, and that he was Henry's father, and that he was just in town for a week, staying at Granny's.

Emma was stricken by his eyes though. They were so familiar, more familiar than his name, and his name slid off her tongue like butter into chocolate.

They were blue, like oceans and skies and the sheen off the edge of soap bubbles.

Blue like lightning.

Graham died a few months later, and Killian held her as she cried. Her best friend was gone, and when Regina patted her shoulder she almost strangled the woman.

Because Storybrooke was waking up.

She made Killian her deputy. Regina tried to talk her out of it, but was quickly silenced by a look from Emma's portfolio of 'Shut Up Stares'.

Then those two children were found, and Killian convinced her to help them, noting with a soft kind of sympathy that, "You've been abandoned as well."

And she began to think maybe there was more to this than she previously thought.

Because Storybrooke wasn't the same.

And then August came, mysterious and a bit alike to Killian and a fair amount too interested in Henry.

And when Killian helped her hunt down evidence of Regina's possible corruption, there was a moment, just one, when their hands brushed, and she could have sworn time stopped. Not in the way it had before, when Killian hadn't been there, but in the way when you want that one moment to freeze, to keep forvever, and you want it so hard that it almost works.

And Mr. Gold beat a burglar half to death with his cane, and Killian caught regina holding something over on him in the jail cell.

And Emma sort of kind of wished her Valentine's Day could still be spent with Killian, just with less crime and blackmail.

And then, Mary-Maragret and David's affair came out, Kathryn went missing and soon she and Killian were Mary-Margaret's only friends. And Emma found herself arresting David, and Killian was there to assure her they'd prove her friend's innocence.

And taking on Ruby as their assisstant was a better decision than either of them had thought, but a more grim benefit was soon revealed when she found what seemed to be Kathryn's heart. It was Killian who had told Mary-Margaret about the fingerprints on the box because Emma couldn't do it.

And as the case against Mary-Margaret became more thorough and more undeniable, it was Killian who took extra paperwork to give her more time to investigate, to try and prove her friend innocent.

And it was Killian who called her in the middle of the night to tell her Mary-Margaret was gone. And during the whole spectacle with Jefferson, and the hearing in the morning, Killian was there.

And when Kathryn came back, and Mr. Gold thought August was his son, it was Killian who dealt with the routine duties so Emma could straighten things out. And that night when they ate dinner together, even if it was in the office over paperwork, it still felt a bit like a date to Emma.

And when August tracked down Killian, took him to the woods to show him his past, it was Emma he came to afterward, and that night as they talked over pie from Granny's, she realized she'd be lost without him.

Because Storybrooke was impossible without him.

And when Killian decided to leave Storybrooke, to come back only every now and then, it was Emma he went to to say goodbye. She only began to cry after she closed the door.

And when Henry was in the hospital it was Emma who never left his side, who guarded him while Killian did his utmost to save him. Because even if Emma would rather be fighting with him, it was more important somebody made sure Henry was alright, or if not alright at least alive.

And when he began to flatline, it was Emma who held Killian as he began to cry. She ran a hand through his hair and thought of all the things he was never going to do with his son.

And when Henry was alive again, Killian's tears still wet on his cheek, it was Emma who swept down upon him and hugged him within an inch of his life.

And when Killian kissed her, the rainbow arc of light and warmth and love that flowed througgh her was worth twenty-eight years of oblivion and repetition. Every minute of it was worth this. Every memory that flared up inside her paled in comparison to this. Henry alive, Killian holding her close, the curse broken.

Because Storybrooke was alive again.

Because she was alive again.


	3. Beaches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They only ever meet on beaches.

They only ever meet on beaches.

When the sun is blinding and the sea roiling with unmet tempests, when the fog is just burning off the air and the sand is warming beneath her hands, he walks from the foam like some deity in Greco-Roman myth.

Except he's left her now, at sea far, far away from her. On a boat, serving with soldiers. The war has hit it's peak, and she can't help but worry when she hears the news.

It used to surprise her, looking up to find a man standing beside her, dripping wet with salt water and flickering like fog in the sun.

She'd give anything to be surprised now.

She's checked every list, scanned crowds for that one face. But she never finds it. She claws at the people around her, pushing her back with a tidal wave of arms and chests, but she rips at them, fights and fights and falls through them, knees hitting the ground in despair and defeat.

Her country may be safe, her people proud and tall and victorious, but her seaman is gone and she cannot join them in their gladness.

The pale grey tiles are cool and smooth beneath her hands, and her hair falls into her eyes like sand. The rush of people has moved beyond her, and she can hear footsteps now, soft and limping. She brushes the hair from her eyes and tries to collect herself, to move.

But a hand is reaching out to her, a right hand, the left tied uselessly to the man's chest, and without the scruff and the sea salt she almost doesn't recognize him. But the blue eyes burn her as ever, and she takes her seaman's hand.

They only ever meet on beaches, but sometimes exceptions must be made.


	4. Stargazers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Together, they run.

In which Killian is the Doctor and Emma is his companion. He's going to show her the stars.

Space is large, Emma thinks. Infinite and endless. If she didn't have her ship and her captain, she'd be hopelessly lost. Hell, she thinks, stretching and sighing, she's pretty much lost anyways in this ship. She turns the corner into a room that seems entirely window. He's standing, coat behind his hands as they rest in his pockets, staring into the vastness of space as though it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

"Stargazing? How boring," Emma chuckles, and he smiles, knowing she's joking.

"It's only boring when you already know the stars," he counters, turning just enough for her to see his smile. She continues in, staring openly at the view. His eyes are still fixed on her, and she lets the wonder show.

"Well I certainly don't know these," she says breathlessly, coming to a stop beside him.

"Would you like to?" He asks, and Emma doesn't think twice.

"Yes." She points at a particularly bright point, brow furrowed, and asks, "Is that going to kill us?"

"Ahhhh..." Killian squints at it for a moment before turning to her and nodding furiously. "Yes. Probably. Yes it is."

"Run?" She asks, rolling up her sleeves.

"Run." He affirms, and they do.

Emma's laughing, the adrenaline flooding her bones and lifting her veins like stardust. He's beside her all the way, a jealous race, a thieving hero, a smiling rogue. Her captain, with a map of the universe and a buzzing screwdriver to light the way.

They reach the control room in a tangle of limbs and a skid of sneakers.

"We're not gonna die then?" She asks, pushing and pulling the buttons and levers he points out.

"No- blue level blue level!- not if we can- push that button, there- leave right about- green!- now!" The TARDIS creaks into life, convulsing like a beating heart, time energy flowing like blood, and Emma can feel the vibrations in the air. She reaches up to touch one, and Killian laughs, pointing joyfully at her.

"Isn't it wonderful? Time in space!" He spins around, practically bouncing for joy in his squeaky red sneakers.

"Yeah," Emma laughs, marveling at the stars around her. "It is."


	5. With Love

It all begins with a tiny note- tiny even by Emma's standards- on the edge of a purloined German telegram.

' _You have very nice hair_ ', it says, and Emma gets an odd feeling like she's eavesdropping on someone's love affair or something until she checks her copy against the one sent to her superiors and sees that the note isn't there. She wrinkles her nose and shakes her head and huffs out a sigh of frustration as she crosses out the note with a quick scribble. There's a war on, and she has work to do.

The note lingers on her mind for the next few weeks, until another piece of coded correspondence crosses Emma's desk. It's recent, pertinent, and it's got ' _you have a lovely smile_ ', scrawled on it in the same hand as the first note. She hisses like a cat that's been stepped on and stands up. Every other person in the room looks at her, eyebrows raised and faces lost in the endless rows of blue uniforms. She clears her throat and sits down, eerily aware of everyone's eyes on her for the rest of the hour. After that she scans every piece of paper given to her, looking for another note. There are none, not a single word in the artful, irritating, drawl that had paid her compliments twice already. Mary-Margaret looks at her like she's lost her mind, and she's eighty percent certain that Captain Charmi- (Nolan, sorry, Nolan) goes through her desk a few times, looking for drugs or poison or something to explain why his best codebreaker has suddenly lost her mind. Emma's not even sure how to explain it, so she just shakes her head and walks away when they ask.

And then she gets the third one, ( _'it always makes me sad to see you upset'_ ), and she just can't deal with it. Because first of all, _who the hell is this guy?_ and second of all, why does he think this is the best way to get her attention? and third of all, **_who the hell is this guy?_** He's beginning to get personal instead of creepy, sweet as well as awkward. Emma kind of wants to know who would care about her enough to leave these notes, but not enough to say who they are. It's a mystery, and evidenced by her job, Emma cannot stand an unsolved mystery.

So naturally, she does the sensible thing and looks at what all three notes have in common. All three are on German papers, all three were found by the Brits, and all three went through the office of one Cora Mills. Further investigation- otherwise known as intimidation of a skittish secretary- revealed that Mills' assistant, Killian Jones, was likely the one leaving the notes. Except that's not what she does first. What she does first is yelp in a very undignified manner, stand up so quickly she knocks over her desk, and go running out of the room to catch up to the deliveryman.

The incident that follows involves forks, lighters, several confidential documents, and a solemn vow to never speak of it again.

And then Emma does the sensible thing. After that, she makes up excuses to go into Mills' office, and she takes great care to be inconspicuous as she watches the grinning brunette who handles her files. Of course, he cannot be said to do the same, and Emma tries not to laugh as he looks up at her for the fifteenth time in ten minutes. The notes keep coming, but now that she knows where they're coming from she's not so bothered. In fact, sometimes she writes back.

The one and only time Jones messes up is still giggled about in certain, very covert, circles of the cryptanalysis department. Very covert. So, so covert that they are hard to find even if you are in them. That kind of covert. Emma is humming under hear breath as she shuffles through the latest influx from Mills' office, looking for her note, when Captain Charm- _Nolan_ calls the entire department up to the floor to speak to them. He starts a projector, and begins to detail the importance of a document they'd all received from Mills' office, and how it would turn the tide of the war, and how they should study it carefully because the Germans had wised up and changed their codes. Emma's looking at her copy, then up at Killian, who's looking at her. There's no note on her paper, and she wonders what on earth he's staring at her so pointedly for- and then she sees it. Not that it's hard to see, given that it's expanded large and clear on the projector. Somehow, in the rush, Killian must have mixed up her file and the captain's, because there, larger than life and just as strikingly unfair, is 'I love you. Dinner?' with proper punctuation for once and everything in Killian's eternally frustrating handwriting. Emma's eye begins to twitch, but Killian smiles sheepishly and she sighs.

"Everything alright, Swan?" Captain Char- _Nolan, alright, **Nolan**_ asks.

She just shakes her head and walks away.


End file.
